Create a Business Website: Integrating Web Applications for Your Design Business

At Vintage Renewal, learning how to create a website that worked for me was no easy task.  As an indie redesigner, it’s up to me to create all the inventory, write up great descriptions, create my brand identity and market that whole package to the world via the Internet and other creative avenues.  

 

The Internet is my number one venue for promotion.  Thanks to the web, people all over the world have discovered Vintage Renewal’s design aesthetic.   I firmly believe that if you create a unique and interesting product and create a business website around it, people will find you!  This is no one-step process, and you should be prepared to list your work in as many appropriate places online that you can.  There are tons of free ways to do that via Tumblr, Flicker, Twitter and Facebook.  Don’t forget the importance of tagging and creating interesting descriptions for your work when you create a business website.

 

Once you get those pictures and interest out there into the universe, you’d better have a pretty fantastic website to back it up and give people the chance to buy from you.  

 

Wondering how to create a website? Well, it was heaven sent when I stumbled across IndieMade.  It helps if you're a bit of a DIY girl and guy, but the assistance is there when you need it.  It is very self-explanatory and you will be so proud that you can create a business website for a nominal fee each month.

 

There are a lot of different aspects of my business that I wasn’t able to showcase through other web templates and even with the use of a web designer that I thought would solve all my web dilemmas.    If you are like me and are very determined to create a business website that looks professional, but you do not have a large budget, you will find all your tools here at IndieMade. 

 

I have created a quarterly Pop+Up Eco-Boutique that will expand and travel across the country eventually and it was very important for me to have an events calendar on my website where people could follow my agenda.  It’s easy as a snap to create events on IndieMade.  

 

 

If my company gets press in the news, you better believe that I want to share it with my friends and clients online.  You can easily create a news page on IndieMade to show all your best features like this. 

 

 

 

Another area that I was very much dropping the ball on when figuring out how to create a website was building my own blog into the site.  Sure, I used Tumblr and did create a small following.  The only problem with that route was that I didn’t like that people had to click off my website to view it.  It’s so important to keep your captive audience on your site and to have all these features under one domain.  Now that is possible with one of the basic features at IndieMade.  Here is an snapshot of mine:

 

 

 

 

Since I am basically a one-woman show with a teeny bit of part-time help, I can only make a certain amount of current inventory.  I couldn’t possibly show the range of my work without a gallery posting my previously sold pieces.  Thank goodness for this gallery feature on IndieMade, which I have renamed as my “Sold Items” on the site.  It’s a wonderful way to captivate the people that are interested in more than you have available at the moment.  This feature could very much lead to custom orders based on aesthetics similar to that of your previous pieces.  

 

 

 

The store is a fantastic feature that allows me to create my own inventory number for tracking and to add multiple angle shots of each piece, along with a great lengthy description and tag words.

 

If you feel limited by some of the features instantly available on IndieMade when you create a business website, IndieMade has made it very easy to utilize other web tools and applications for your business.  Don’t be afraid to play around until you get the best results.  Again: ask, ask, ask, if you can’t figure it out yourself. IndieMade is there to help you.

 

For example, I have made a portfolio page with photobucket.com for my indiemade.com site:

 

 

 

I have also created a slideshow of my previous Pop+Up Eco-Boutiques slide show with photobucket.com and place them on my IndieMade site:

 

 

 

I felt like I lost a lot of traffic on my previous website, but not having the ability to capture names on a mailing list.  I found a form that was already made on wufoo.com and used it on my site.  This site lets you create up to three forms for free!  Again, each site will have a different set of instructions, but I figured them all out my reading the directions, followed by a number of questions to the company providing the service and bingo!   I got what I wanted.  

      

 

      

 

My most recent discovery was a website called issuu.com that is a very professional way to create an online magazine, catalog or lookbook.  It was very easy to copy the source code on the page on issuu.com and then embed it back to my IndieMade site:

 

      

 

This is what it looked like on the back end while I was creating it:

 

Basically, I am thrilled to report that I am in LOVE with IndieMade.  If you want to create a business website, are on a tight budget, and have $12.95 a month, then you are in luck!  All you need is some perseverance to begin exploring and starting with the websites that I have mentioned above and you can learn how to create a website for your business in no time at all.  You can also have a killer site without using any of those outside sites too.  Indiemade.com has it all and it’s super flexible and always changing to meet our needs.

 

Give them a shot!  Check out what I’ve done at Vintage Renewal.  Another key feature is that I could use my own domain name and still have all these customized goodness with IndieMade.

Thanks for reading and I hope I have given you some great ideas on how to create a business website too!

 

Xo

Jeanne Connolly

Indie Redesigner

Vintage Renewal

Vintagerenewal.com